The invention relates to an arrangement of supporting and guiding various axles, plates, housings, shafts, etc. of a grinding machine, whereby the support and guidance is carried out with an improved precision.
Grinding machines of the type described herein are used for grinding of, for example, slots, threads, exterior and interior diameters of front surfaces of workpieces.
In a prior embodiment of a grinding machine the grinding wheel support arrangement includes a support frame or housing on which a support member is pivotally connected with one of its free ends. A support leg or housing is pivotally mounted on the support member at the other free end. A grinding wheel shaft, on which the grinding wheel is coaxially mounted, is rotatable in the support leg or housing. At least two separate adjusting means are operatively connected to the support frame. One of these adjusting means is pivotally connected at the support member and the other adjusting means is pivotally connected to the support leg for adjusting the position of the grinding wheel relative to the support frame. Consequently two separate adjusting means act in the plane of the grinding wheel in mutually intersecting directions. It has, however, been ascertained that such a grinding wheel support arrangement really only requires one primary separate adjusting means to effect a precise positional adjustment of the grinding wheel with respect to a workpiece to be ground and more importantly maintain this precise adjustment.
In an alternate version of my prior grinding wheel support arrangement a post is provided on the support frame on which an intermediate arm is pivotally mounted with one of its free ends. The other free end of the intermediate arm is connected to the support leg or housing, which rotatably supports the grinding wheel. This grinding wheel support arrangement also includes two adjusting means. A first adjusting means is in the form of a hydraulic piston cylinder mounted on the support frame which acts in a direction normal to the support table. This piston cylinder supports a frame which includes a second hydraulic or pneumatic adjusting means which in turn is directly connected to the axial bearing supports of the grinding wheel. These axial bearing supports are in turn mounted in the housing. Here again, a two-directional adjustment is used for precisely positioning the grinding wheel vis a vis a workpiece and to maintain it in this precisely adjusted position.
It has been found such such bi-directional adjusting means of the grinding wheel support arrangement do not give sufficiently precise adjustments of the grinding wheel vis a vis a workpiece.